A reader and writer fooling with words

Why do we call Mayday for help?

Despite spending a significant amount of time teaching Beaver Scouts and Scouts the basics of distress signals over the last five years I was surprised to discover the origin of the mayday call recently.

Mayday is the international radio distress call for help and is used to indicate there is an immediate danger of loss of life, for example a ship that is sinking. It is used primarily by aviators and mariners.

Like other distress signals, such as whistle blasts and piles of rocks, it is always transmitted in groups of three.

It originates from the French phrase “m-aidez” which means “help me” and isn’t as old a call as I’d thought.

Mayday originated in 1923 in Croydon, London. Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio operator at Croydon airport, was asked to think of a word to indicate emergency that could be easily understood by pilots and ground staff. As most flights were between Croydon and Paris, he picked “m’aider” (short for “venez m’aider” – come and help me). In 1927 the voice call mayday on radio replaced the Morse Code SOS on telegraph as the standard distress call. Croydon Airport, replaced by Heathrow, closed in 1959.

Interestingly, a false mayday call in the US is punishable by up to six years in jail and/or a quarter of a million dollar fine.